CHICAGO | City Casino

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by bcp

I'll take a stab at answering your question to Tom - Chinese love to gamble (probably at a higher rate per capita, as a guess), have money, and whale gamblers abound.

Yeah .. none of this is stereotyping at all. You do realize that gambling is basically illegal outside of a few places in China (Hong Kong, Macau, etc), right? As someone married to a person from China whose entire family lives there, and me who has spent time there...this is about as big of a bullshit stereotype as I've seen on here. But I'm guessing you are confusing a community like the Hmong, who've had problems with this in places like Minnesota, with Chinese people.

Chinese people like to play games like mah jongg at home with friends and family, basically. People they actually know.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by marothisu

Yeah .. none of this is stereotyping at all. You do realize that gambling is basically illegal outside of a few places in China (Hong Kong, Macau, etc), right? As someone married to a person from China whose entire family lives there, and me who has spent time there...this is about as big of a bullshit stereotype as I've seen on here. But I'm guessing you are confusing a community like the Hmong, who've had problems with this in places like Minnesota, with Chinese people.

Chinese people like to play games like mah jongg at home with friends and family, basically. People they actually know.

Rightly or wrongly, the Indiana casinos run a number of buses to Chinatown (see e.g. http://horseshoecasinoshuttlechicago.com/), although I'm sure if people are riding these buses, they won't have trouble taking the Red Line to wherever.

I actually wonder if a casino could find a spot in the Ohio/Ontario kitsch sewer (near where that ridiculous McDonald's is).

[k1052]

Originally Posted by ardecila

One casino will not suddenly turn our city into the endless tourism/entertainment playground that is Vegas or Orlando. MCP succeeds because Chicago offers the best combination of large floor space and plentiful air connections. That's the value proposition, a casino is a sideshow at best for the convention business.

Given the fiscal challenges in our city, the casino should be sited to maximize revenue, full stop. I believe that means integration with McCormick Place is a secondary concern. IMO the revenue-maximizing location is closer to the heart of downtown, in an urban highrise format, and open to the city where walk-in traffic is high.

I'd honestly choose the Macerich parcel behind the Wrigley Building. A hotel tower is not out of place there and it is smack between Michigan Ave and the River North nightlife district. Plenty of existing hotels already pumping tourists into the area, including conventioneers staying at the Sheraton, Hyatt Regency or Swissotel. The multi-level streets allow for efficient loading and parking without compromising the urban integration. Nordstrom and North Bridge provide plenty of shopping for visitors to pump their casino winnings back into the city.

Any of these other locations on the downtown fringes may be well-designed, assuming the city demands that, but I think they will still end up as islands like the casinos in other Rust Belt cities. Not enough synergy with surroundings.

Whenever I try to come up with a better cash vacuuming site than this pocket of River North everything else seems to pale.

[OrdoSeclorum]

Originally Posted by Halsted & Villagio

China Town has been cut off for far too long. Where possible, we must take a page from NY and cure that problem. We all benefit from being able to walk from China Town to areas just south of downtown and ultimately downtown itself.

Ch.... Chinatown is cut off? I... When I moved to Chicago in '97 some other carless college friends and I started to get dim sum brunch Sunday mornings every few weekends. We just hopped on the red line at Belmont. It felt much more accessible to me than the whole west side, that's for sure. You can be in the Loop from Chinatown in about 15 minutes. And I think there's two *really* accessible highway access points?

[west-town-brad]

Originally Posted by ardecila

One casino will not suddenly turn our city into the endless tourism/entertainment playground that is Vegas or Orlando. MCP succeeds because Chicago offers the best combination of large floor space and plentiful air connections. That's the value proposition, a casino is a sideshow at best for the convention business.

Given the fiscal challenges in our city, the casino should be sited to maximize revenue, full stop. I believe that means integration with McCormick Place is a secondary concern. IMO the revenue-maximizing location is closer to the heart of downtown, in an urban highrise format, and open to the city where walk-in traffic is high.

I'd honestly choose the Macerich parcel behind the Wrigley Building. A hotel tower is not out of place there and it is smack between Michigan Ave and the River North nightlife district. Plenty of existing hotels already pumping tourists into the area, including conventioneers staying at the Sheraton, Hyatt Regency or Swissotel. The multi-level streets allow for efficient loading and parking without compromising the urban integration. Nordstrom and North Bridge provide plenty of shopping for visitors to pump their casino winnings back into the city.

Any of these other locations on the downtown fringes may be well-designed, assuming the city demands that, but I think they will still end up as islands like the casinos in other Rust Belt cities. Not enough synergy with surroundings.

Convention access will maximize revenue.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by Tom In Chicago

This site is too close to Michigan Ave. Unless this "casino" is some sort of "resort destination" facility that can be built into a mixed use building with retail/restaurants/hotel and even apartments/condos in some mega structure, I'm not really seeing it. . . and the busses from Chinatown would clog downtown streets. . .

. . .

No such thing as too close to Michigan Ave. The site is probably tight for what most casino operators would prefer, but the revenue potential per gaming position would be insane. You could make more money at that site even with less floor area, compared to more marginal sites in the downtown fringe.

I imagine it would be sort of a megastructure, yeah.
-Loading and parking on Levels 1 & 2
-dining and shopping on Level 3 (i.e Upper Michigan level) with connection to Nordstrom and North Bridge.
-gambling on levels 4 & 5
-structural capacity to add a hotel tower on one end and residential on the other end in future phases (like how they built Marquee at B37)
-improvements to the multi-level streets (stairs, elevators, etc) to provide a graceful transition between ground-level River North and elevated Michigan Ave

Not sure Chinatown needs to run buses for this site, since the Red Line at Grand is literally a block away with direct rides to Chinatown AND Argyle area. Just have the casino comp CTA passes.

It's not like this is a bad location for conventioneers either, since a TON of them stay at Hyatt Regency, Sheraton, Marriott, etc. in big room blocks and use buses or rideshare to get to MCP. But it doesn't depend on them exclusively - the casino doesn't suddenly post a loss after the Housewares Show moves to Orlando or whatever.

[ChiPlanner]

Originally Posted by ardecila

One casino will not suddenly turn our city into the endless tourism/entertainment playground that is Vegas or Orlando. MCP succeeds because Chicago offers the best combination of large floor space and plentiful air connections. That's the value proposition, a casino is a sideshow at best for the convention business.

Given the fiscal challenges in our city, the casino should be sited to maximize revenue, full stop. I believe that means integration with McCormick Place is a secondary concern. IMO the revenue-maximizing location is closer to the heart of downtown, in an urban highrise format, and open to the city where walk-in traffic is high.

I'd honestly choose the Macerich parcel behind the Wrigley Building. A hotel tower is not out of place there and it is smack between Michigan Ave and the River North nightlife district. Plenty of existing hotels already pumping tourists into the area, including conventioneers staying at the Sheraton, Hyatt Regency or Swissotel. The multi-level streets allow for efficient loading and parking without compromising the urban integration. Nordstrom and North Bridge provide plenty of shopping for visitors to pump their casino winnings back into the city.

Any of these other locations on the downtown fringes may be well-designed, assuming the city demands that, but I think they will still end up as islands like the casinos in other Rust Belt cities. Not enough synergy with surroundings.

Real question: if this parcel was chosen, was the Nordstrom built to have a tower on top of it? That could greatly influence any plan for this lot.

[r18tdi]

The Macerich parcel makes a whole lot of sense. Good call

[The Pimp]

Originally Posted by marothisu

yeah .. None of this is stereotyping at all. You do realize that gambling is basically illegal outside of a few places in china (hong kong, macau, etc), right? As someone married to a person from china whose entire family lives there, and me who has spent time there...this is about as big of a bullshit stereotype as i've seen on here. But i'm guessing you are confusing a community like the hmong, who've had problems with this in places like minnesota, with chinese people.

Chinese people like to play games like mah jongg at home with friends and family, basically. People they actually know.

wtf???

[nomarandlee]

Originally Posted by ChiPlanner

Real question: if this parcel was chosen, was the Nordstrom built to have a tower on top of it? That could greatly influence any plan for this lot.

Hopefully whatever is done with at the Macerich site the Nordstrom building will get blow-up hell. It is a blank walled monstrosity that would drag down the optics whatever will be built at the site.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by bcp

Have you ever been to a casino?
I could go hunt for official data to back this theory up..really don't need to. And I love Mah Jongg...my ex-mother in law (hint hint) used to whip me at it regularly, for money.

I've been to casinos all over the world, and tons in the US. So yes, I'm more than familiar with casinos. This is still stereotyping of a high degree. People can point to buses all they want from Chinatown, but the reality is that there's still more of other types than that at the casino. There's a demand for busses instead of cars from them (many people who don't own their own and therefore can't drive themselves. There'sa very good reason for this).

While I'm not saying there aren't many who do like the gamble, the reality is that the majority actually don't care to go to a casino to do this. Many are more into playing games like mah jongg at home and winning money off of friends/family, not unlike how many people in America do the same thing at home with friends/family playing poker.

I guess you could call this gambling, but not at a casino. If we went back prior to 70 or 80 tears ago then we might be having a different conversation. Most people there are far removed from it though. There's a lot of people there though so by numbers you'll have a lot into it, and even way more who don't care for it.

The reason for putting a casino in the 78, which I doubt would happen, would have nothing to do with Chinatown being there and everything to do with being close to downtown.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by bcp

fair enough, and good points. plenty of other types of folks in casinos. But here in the US, asians are over-represented at the tables.

key thing from my original post:



taking all betters on this one!

Key word for your post: "Asian" not "Chinese".

Which brings me back to my original post. Chinatown is mainly Chinese and you say "Asian". There are many other countries in Asia. And as someone who grew up in Minnesota with a large Hmong population (largest or 2nd largest in the US), whose community leaders have more than publicized their own gambling problems, I know this steroetyping like the back off my hand. I can't tell you how many times people went to a casino there, saw a bunch of Asian people and labeled them as "Chinese" even though they're from places like Laos, Burma, Thailand, etc and aren't even Chinese.

Again, stereotyping to the highest degree.

[TR Devlin]

Originally Posted by ardecila

I'd honestly choose the Macerich parcel behind the Wrigley Building. A hotel tower is not out of place there and it is smack between Michigan Ave and the River North nightlife district. Plenty of existing hotels already pumping tourists into the area, including conventioneers staying at the Sheraton, Hyatt Regency or Swissotel. The multi-level streets allow for efficient loading and parking without compromising the urban integration. Nordstrom and North Bridge provide plenty of shopping for visitors to pump their casino winnings back into the city.

Any of these other locations on the downtown fringes may be well-designed, assuming the city demands that, but I think they will still end up as islands like the casinos in other Rust Belt cities. Not enough synergy with surroundings.

IMO, this is the most valuable block in the City. And I agree that this would be a fantastic site for a casino.

But is a casino the highest and best use for this site? Yes, but only if it’s part of a very large development.

In my dreams, I’d tear down the Realtor’s building, widen the Plaza of the Americas (but leave 444 No Michigan) and deck over Rush St. Then I’d build a very large (say, 3 million sq feet) development on the Macerich block. The main entrance for cars would be on lower Rush and for pedestrians on upper Rush facing the Plaza of the Americas. A casino would be on floors three to five and hotel and condos above the casino. It would top out at 1,200 to 1,400 feet. To me, that’s the highest and best use for the site.

Now, getting this to work would require a strong market for high-end condos. And even if the market was fairly good, it would be difficult if this building and Tribune East were under construction at the same time and competing for the same buyers.

So maybe from the owner’s point of view it makes sense to wait a couple years to see how the market is for high-end condos and how sales are going at Tribune East. Because I don’t think you’re going to get top dollar from a developer who’s going to build another Block 37.

[Tom In Chicago]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

Rightly or wrongly, the Indiana casinos run a number of buses to Chinatown (see e.g. http://horseshoecasinoshuttlechicago.com/), although I'm sure if people are riding these buses, they won't have trouble taking the Red Line to wherever.

BINGO!!! Yes, my constant reference back to Chinatown is partly because the Indiana casino's run frequent shuttle busses, but also the post was tongue and cheek. . . wasn't making any overt racialist reference. . . I still think MCP is the best place for it (conventioneers / relative proximity to downtown) and then there's always nearby Chinatown. . .

. . .

[gandalf612]

Originally Posted by nomarandlee

It would take away much of what is intriguing and magnificent about that site (pedestrian through access, outdoor common plaza areas.

What are you on about? the site referred to is a surface parking lot

[nomarandlee]

Originally Posted by gandalf612

What are you on about? the site referred to is a surface parking lot

You think I'm pining for it to remain a surface parking lot. Seriously? A blind man could see that any future building would have unique upper-level integrated pedestrian access to help tie in the Wrigley Building, Northbridge, Realtor’s building, and Michigan Avenue together with its presence. Either a building there could effectively turn its back on that connectivity and its surroundings (like its Nordstrom neighbor to the north does) or it could make it a priority by taking opportunistic advantage by making it one of Chicago's most interesting dynamic public spaces in the city. A promise that John Buck made when he developed Northbridge back in the 90's promising to give Chicago its equivalent of Rockafeller Center, promise not delivered. If it is a largely windowless hulk of a casino monstrosity my bet it would be more the former, even if built in a tower form.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by nomarandlee

You think I'm pining for it to remain a surface parking lot. Seriously? A blind man could see that any future building would have unique upper-level integrated pedestrian access to help tie in the Wrigley Building, Northbridge, Realtor’s building, and Michigan Avenue together with its presence. Either a building there could effectively turn its back on that connectivity and its surroundings (like its Nordstrom neighbor to the north does) or it could make it a priority by taking opportunistic advantage by making it one of Chicago's most interesting dynamic public spaces in the city. A promise that John Buck made when he developed Northbridge back in the 90's promising to give Chicago its equivalent of Rockafeller Center, promise not delivered. If it is a largely windowless hulk of a casino monstrosity my bet it would be more the former, even if built in a tower form.

The RFP made it quite clear that the usual casino style architecture and site planning will not be tolerated. It seemed like they made this point on almost every page.

I don't see a reason why a casino can't be a great fit with the urbanism of this area, in the hands of a great design team like SOM, Studio Gang, Jahn, AS+GG, etc. I keep thinking of the Project Commodore tower in NYC, which also has raised streets on one side and opens to grade on the other.

Originally Posted by TR Devlin

But is a casino the highest and best use for this site? Yes, but only if it’s part of a very large development.

From the city's point of view it is certainly the highest and best use since it generates more tax revenue than any other potential use.

[nomarandlee]

Originally Posted by ardecila

The RFP made it quite clear that the usual casino style architecture and site planning will not be tolerated. It seemed like they made this point on almost every page.

Entrusting city officials to enforce standards of good taste and urban design in the city seems like a towering leap of faith.

I don't see a reason why a casino can't be a great fit with the urbanism of this area, in the hands of a great design team like SOM, Studio Gang, Jahn, AS+GG, etc. I keep thinking of the Project Commodore tower in NYC, which also has raised streets on one side and opens to grade on the other.

Of course it could, with the right creativity, flexibility, cost, and firm. Will it though? It's hard to think of any Casino, originally built as such, that is really a striking piece of tasteful design. My minds not coming up with an example if anyone can fill me in. I just have relatively low confidence that a casino operator will be intent on making the integration of public space and fitting respectful design for the site the highest priority. I could be wrong of course but I wouldn't like the odds.

From the city's point of view it is certainly the highest and best use since it generates more tax revenue than any other potential use.

Strictly on that criteria, you could be right.

[marothisu]

Casinos typically look like a big solid thing because they typically do not have any windows. This is by design so people basically lose track of time, causing people to spend more time gambling, which means more money for the casino.

Will be interesting to see. I'm sure they can figure something out. Alitra in Macau isn't a bad design btw.

[Tom In Chicago]

Originally Posted by nomarandlee

Entrusting city officials to enforce standards of good taste and urban design in the city seems like a towering leap of faith.

Eh. . . it might in most cities, but in Chicago there is a pretty healthy culture around architecture appreciation, and although that doesn't prevent bad buildings to get built, it assures that those powers that be who let it happen get told about it!

. . .